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If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620

This post ended up being so much longer than I expected! I think I got lost in a research vortex. Feel free to skip through to the items you need to help with your Pilgrim studies, and just ignore the rest! 🙂

Our feature book to introduce our study was If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620by Ann McGovern, but the amount of information available to expand on the book, as usual, was overwhelming. There were so many books I wanted to use to introduce our study on Pilgrims, but this one seemed easiest to grasp, especially for my six-year-old.

If you’d like to use some of these ideas and need a planner to help you organize your projects, download this free Story Farmer exclusive “Let’s Travel Through Time” one-page planner, or download a more extensive (and free) unit study planner from Hi5 Homeschool.

The Church of England

In the early 1600’s there was a group of English Protestants who felt the Church of England was straying from Biblical principles. These Protestants, called Separatists because they didn’t want to pledge allegiance to the Church of England, suffered persecution due to their beliefs and decided to flee England for religious freedom. They initially found refuge in The Netherlands.

Watch a short Drive Thru Historyvideo about the Separatists and the Church of England.

Life in The Netherlands

The Separatists lived in Amsterdam for the first year, but they found the lifestyle there objectionable and relocated to Leiden (then called Leyden), another Dutch town. Unfortunately, by 1620, it was illegal for anyone in The Netherlands to hold religious meetings in their homes. This combined with a other issues forced the Separatists to make the decision to travel to the New World in hopes of making a better life for themselves and their children while being able to worship freely and in peace.

Take a photo tour of Pilgrim sites in Leiden. (I had to reduce my computer screen size to 80% in order to view the captions, but the pictures were interesting and worth the small effort.)

Traveling to the New World

The first ship purchased for the trip to the New World was the Speedwell. With plans to head to England first, the Separatists purchased this ship in Holland and sailed from Delfshaven, a small inner-city harbor in the Netherlands, on July 22, 1620. Before leaving for England, John Robinson, the pastor of the Pilgrim church in Leiden, read a letter to bid them farewell. This letter had a profound impact on many of the Pilgrims, and some of the concepts and wording made their way into the Mayflower Compact.

They sailed to Southampton, England, to meet the Mayflower with the intention of sailing to the New World from there. Unfortunately, due to the Speedwell taking on water, they ended up in Plymouth, a port city on the southern coast of England. Now with only the Mayflower, many from the Speedwell crammed onto the already small ship, and the voyage proved to be difficult due to the conditions. Because the Mayflower was a cargo ship, the Pilgrims lived in the dark, damp, and cold cargo decks below the crew’s quarters. The sailors detested the Pilgrims; wooden chamber pots served as toilets; and there was nowhere to bathe.

During the voyage, the Pilgrims’ main diet consisted of hard tack, salt pork, dried meats (including cow tongue), pickled foods, oats, and fish. The primary beverage for everyone, including children, was beer! (Water was likely to become brackish and potentially deadly!)

Old Comers

The early colonists were not referred to as “Pilgrims” until the early 19th century after a manuscript by William Bradford was discovered in which Bradford referred to them as “pilgrimes” and “saints.” Before this, the Plymouth settlers were known as “Old Comers” and later as “Forefathers.” It was Daniel Webster who spoke of “Pilgrim Fathers” at a bicentennial celebration of Plymouth’s founding in 1820, which introduced our common usage of the term “pilgrim.” Those not part of the Pilgrim church were called “Strangers.”

Mayflower Compact

The Mayflower Compact was the first agreement for self-government to be created in our country, and John Quincy Adams saw it as a fore-runner of the ideas developed in the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. It was drawn up by the Pilgrims on board the ship to serve as the basis of their future legal and social organization. Adams described the Mayflower Compact as “the only instance in human history of that positive, original social compact” and considered it to be the “only legitimate source for government.” It was not called the Mayflower Compact until 1793.

The Wampanoag Tribe

On November 11, 1620, after 66 days at sea, the Pilgrims arrived at Cape Cod. A few weeks after their arrival at Cape Cod they sailed along the coast, finally landing in Plymouth. Unfortunately, adjusting to life in the New World proved to be difficult, but surviving members of the Wampanoag people offered assistance to the “coat men,” the name given to the English by the Wampanoag.

Picture Study

Mapping Activities

The Pilgrims almost selected Captain John Smith as their military adviser but decided to use Miles Standish instead. However, they did use Smith’s map of New England when voyaging to Plymouth. View a map made by Captain Smith prior to the arrival of the Colonists in Plymouth (from this main site). You can view an interactive version of the same map here.

Originally heading to what is now Virginia, stormy weather and navigational errors forced the Mayflower off-course. View a map of the route the Mayflower took from Plymouth England to Plymouth Colony. With this map you can view how the Gulf Stream ocean current re-directed the colonists.

Print a map featuring where the Pilgrims landed and where they relocated.

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